Tyron took one last glance behind him at the Jorlin manor. There was little he could do to fully conceal his presence there. The signs of the Abyss, the ritual magick he’d performed, and the stench of death magick would remain, hanging thick in the air for any mage to find. The better ones might even be able to discern the types of spells he’d used in the fighting, at least in a general sense.

But there were no witnesses remaining, none that remained alive, at any rate.

He’d gathered up and stored every spirit he could find, but something had happened which he hadn’t quite expected. Some of the souls, notably, those of the noble descendants, though not all of them, had vanished after he’d killed them. It appeared the idea that a heaven of some sorts may actually exist for the followers of The Five Divines may actually be true. Those souls had gone somewhere, and he doubted they’d been able to cross over to the realm of the dead so quickly.

It had been grating to miss out on those spirits, but he had the ones he’d really wanted, and more than enough to pay his tolls.

The skeletons had been stored away safely in the Ossuary, though it was a good thing they didn’t care too much about being comfortable, along with all the materials he could bring with him. It was time to go. He turned back to face forward and, just as the first rays of dawn crept over the horizon, Tyron stepped through the whispering hole in the Veil and vanished from his home realm.

The moment he was through, he ended the ritual and allowed the entrance to close behind him, leaving himself surrounded by the endless dark.

Creatures of the Abyss already surrounded him, their whispers tugging at the threads of his sanity, trying to pick them loose and worm themselves into the gaps. He could understand them so much better now, but he wasn’t sure that it helped. The secrets they offered were dark, twisted things, knowledge that mortals were not meant to possess. If he allowed himself to listen, to be tempted by what they offered, they would infect him with their madness that way, and claim him all the same.

Extending a hand before him, Tyron ignited a globe of unlight, and the voices retreated, unwilling to be touched by its rays. It didn’t illuminate much, if that was even the right word, but it showed enough that Tyron had finally realised the Abyss was not nearly as empty as it first appeared. He didn’t understand this place as much as he would have liked, he was always short on time. It was his most precious resource by a considerable distance.

Studying the Abyss and trying to extract, safely, whatever was useful to him could have been the pursuit of a lifetime, decades at the least, but that was time he couldn’t afford.

He strode forward, the globe held above his upward-facing palm. The whispers were quieter now, but not gone. The denizens of this place were endlessly hungry for any taste of the material realms they could get. It was likely there was nothing he could ever do to chase them away entirely.

That didn’t mean there weren’t other things that could drive them back.

The deeper he walked into the Abyss, treading the strange and un-real paths of that place, the softer the whispers became, as he drew nearer and nearer to something the Abyssals were not willing to approach.

Its presence was so impossibly vast, it wasn’t possible for Tyron to grasp the sheer scale of it. If the Abyssal who had attacked the estate had been a river fish, then this creature was the Empire. Were they even the same species at that point? Did they share the same origins at all? He didn’t know. What he did know was that this entity was truly ancient, older than Rot, Raven and Crone, who had been born when his realm came into existence, and immeasurably powerful. Should this creature find a way to breach the Veil and enter his realm, it would be snuffed out in moments.

A wall of darkness shifted before him as the being became aware of his presence. To avoid angering it, he snuffed out the light and quickly rummaged through his robes for what he had promised.

As he grasped hold of the stones and held them out, the entity focused its attention on him, and he felt it reach out.

An instant later, Tyron fell to his knees, screaming as blood poured from his ears and eyes. His hands rose to claw at his face, to try and dig the crawling whispers out from under his skin, but he stopped himself just in time.

The presence retreated, leaving Tyron to heave and shudder in the darkness as he tried to still his thoughts.

I heard nothing I know nothing I heard nothing I know nothing I heard nothing I know nothing.

He repeated the mantra on a loop until his mind had stilled, allowing him to gently push the memory of what he had felt in that moment away into the recesses of his mind. If he wanted to remain sane, he needed to avoid ever analysing those thoughts too closely.

When he believed he had control of himself again, he stood, only to flinch back when the presence drew closer once more. However, this time it had managed to calibrate itself more appropriately to his tolerance.

Void Speech wasn’t truly language, not the way that Tyron understood it, anyway. It was thoughts, bent around themselves into shapes that conveyed meaning to the recipient. The Abyssals couldn’t talk, but they were able to reach into each other's minds and weave elaborate chains of thought and memory that allowed them to communicate. He wasn’t especially proficient at it, but if the entity wanted to speak to him, there was nothing he could do to prevent it from placing its thoughts into his head.

The entity expressed frustration.

“I’m a fragile little mortal,” Tyron told it, “too delicate to engage with you on almost any level at all.”

Had it tried to communicate with him when he’d been at level one, even this, squeezing its thoughts down to the smallest and simplest form it could manage, would have boiled his brain inside his head. He’d grown many, many times stronger since then, but it was nothing in the face of this creature.

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The entity demanded the payment that had been agreed on, and Tyron held out the stones.

“Take these, and then I will fetch the rest.”

He still didn’t know why this being craved souls the way it did. As far as he knew, Abyssal’s didn’t need to eat, so it wasn’t consuming them for sustenance. There was a great deal he’d managed to learn about souls, that they could be containers and conduits for magick, for example. A suspicion had grown within him that this was the exact reason the being desired them. Souls were not stuff, so they were able to exist within the Abyss, but they could contain things: thoughts, memories, magick, perhaps more. It was possible he was smuggling something to this creature that it couldn’t get any other way via the medium of souls.

As his offerings were drawn away, screaming into the void, Tyron carefully avoided listening to their horrified pleas and withdrew the next batch of stones. Those souls too, were drawn away, vanishing within the entity, never to be heard from again.

The creature wasn’t satisfied, it could never be satisfied, but it understood that Tyron had upheld his end of their bargain. To his surprise, it did not withdraw itself immediately, but remained, a tiny filament of its mind connected to his own.

The entity was curious if the sacrifice had been successful.

“Yes. Your… child… performed admirably. It killed many and consumed much before it was destroyed.”

The entity withdrew for a moment, but not before Tyron had sensed the edges of the bottomless hunger that had surged upward at his words.

It hadn’t been easy to negotiate with the creature to obtain exactly what he’d wanted, but somehow they’d been able to reach an agreement. The Abyssal that had attacked the estate hadn’t actually been a ‘child’ of this being, Tyron had no idea how or if they reproduced, but that was the closest word to approximate how they felt about it. He’d needed a weak Abyssal to cross over, as a regular one could have possibly torn the entire estate to shreds, especially given the majority of the House's Soldiers, and their strongest, were absent from the estate.

Such a weak Abyssal would never have a chance to cross over under normal circumstances, pushed away from the tear in the Veil by those stronger than it. The entity had intervened to ensure the weaker creature made it through, and guaranteed Tyron would not be harmed by it.

The presence returned once more, and the entity expressed curiosity.

“I am willing to trade,” Tyron said, “should the right cause arise.”

This had become a pattern with the entity. It was unwilling to let him leave without extracting a promise to return with more souls, and Tyron wasn’t in any position to deny it. If he tried, he felt he may be consumed on the spot, his own soul ripped from his body and devoured by the impossible creature before him.

Flickers of thought came to Tyron, glimpses, whispers, hints of secrets and knowledge that tempted him sorely. Mysteries of life, death, access to distant realms, ways to breach the planes, the nature of magick itself and even the hidden nature of the Unseen, all were offered to him, if only he were willing to pay the staggering price.

Tyron could feed this creature millions upon millions of souls and still not scratch the surface of what it knew.

By the realm, how he wanted to.

The Abyss was the only place that was equidistant from every point of reality. It was as close to Tyron’s realm as it was to every other, and the creature before him had the power to peer through the Veil and see all of it, though it could never cross over.

With enough souls, he could learn the secrets held by The Divines themselves, find the way to bring them down from wherever they dwelt and wring the immortal life from their bodies.

Almost choking with desire for all that was offered, Tyron shook his head slowly.

“I am not in a position to pay,” he said. “Perhaps something smaller?”

The entity wasn’t angered by this. It was ancient beyond comprehension, and knew exactly what it was doing. Tyron could not, or would not, pay such a price now. But later? When he’d been driven to a corner and exhausted his other options? When he’d tried again and again to find his own way and failed every time?

Perhaps then, the temptation would grow too great.

So instead, Tyron listened as the being offered trinkets instead of the diamonds it had shown him before. Slivers of knowledge, individual runes of power, a sigil he might find useful, a piece of a spell, the cost would only be dozens of souls, not hundreds, or thousands… or more.

Tyron agreed to pay to learn of a sigil that dealt with energy translation, and though he could afford the price right now with the many souls he had harvested and stored in the Ossuary, he did not offer to pay. If he did, the entity would only refuse to let him leave once more until he had agreed to another deal.

Finally, the entity withdrew entirely, leaving Tyron alone once more in the darkness. He felt great relief.

Conjuring his strange globe once more, he set off in another direction, navigating the bizarre paths of the Abyss until he came to the place he desired. It was still marked, just as he had left it, though he hadn’t expected his sigils to survive. Perhaps it was possible to create something here, though the cost would be… unpleasant.

Another ritual was performed, and the Abyssals gathered around, driven wild by the sense of the Veil growing thin, but here also, Tyron was protected by the great being. With its gaze upon him, none dared to rush forward and devour him before forcing their way through the narrow way he had created. With a final shudder, Tyron stepped through and closed the Veil behind him, almost sighing aloud as the final fingertips digging into his mind released their hold, dragged away against their will.

Tyron stood, once again, in the warehouse which he had left, well to the west of Kenmor. It would be a journey of several hours to return to the city; hopefully the carriage driver was waiting as he’d agreed to do.

Carefully, he stripped off his clothes and scrubbed himself with the wash basin and soap he’d prepared, burning the discarded clothing until not a shred of it remained. He also pulled off the enchanted rings and bracelets he’d prepared, tossing those too into the fire and feeding the fire array with magick until they were completely destroyed, the cores ruined beyond recognition.

Only then did he dry himself and dress once more in clean and untainted garments.

He emerged into the early dawn light to find that his rented carriage had indeed waited through the night for him. A blessing. Walking to the main road and flagging one down would have taken him a day.

“Hello there, Master Almsfield. Find what you were looking for?” the driver started as he saw Tyron approach, once more wearing the kinder, gentler face of the enchanter.

“Very much so, Master Wilox.”

“Please, Master Almsfield, I beg you. I drive a carriage for a living. If my associates heard you call me ‘Master’ I’d be kicked in the plums every morning for a week. Arn is fine.”

“As you say, Arn. Are you prepared for the journey back to the capital?” Tyron asked as he settled himself inside the carriage with a sigh.

“Not a problem, Master Almsfield. I went and picked up a pastry for you from the nearby village as well, if you don’t mind. Tasty little thing, if I do say so myself, though perhaps not to your standards.”

Tyron looked about and found a small plate with a golden crusted treat sitting atop it next to him. He gathered it up, and though it was mostly cool, it still had a pleasant warmth when he bit into it. The taste of gravy, minced beef and roasted vegetables filled his mouth as he deliberately chewed. He did need to eat more.

“You just earned yourself an extra gold, Arn.”